END OF THE YEAR AND START OF ANOTHER
2022
REFLETIONS YARO BLOG
As the new
year is approaching, I am reflecting on the past year’s events and calamities.
The global pandemic is still progressing with new strains and as a result we are suffering
a global crisis of major proportions. Fortunately, in Queensland, we are now
90% vaccinated and living a life of closed doors to friends and limiting
ourselves to few outdoor activities. Yet, the total damage of cultural and
economic development is unprecedented. In addition to this global pandemic, we
are still suffering great climate events, small wars and killings and people
are leaving their homes to find a better life somewhere else even though many are dying on the
way.
I am trying
to define all this as a “natural cleansing” by Earth Mother, as people have
abused nature over 200 years now. Michael Meade, my mentor said this very well:
“And so,
in the midst of being lost in the darkest time of the year, in one of the
darkest times of human culture, the way we avoid feeling and being lost is by
connecting to the deeper sense of our own soul, which is secretly connected to
the earth, which is itself a star and from there to the heavens above and to
the cosmos. For, it is about interrelatedness and being present, and being part
of things that are momentous, that are transcendent and yet somehow include us.
And it was the dark times that ancient people understood to be the right times
for finding our true selves and making more soul and redeeming life not just
for ourselves, but for the Earth itself.”
SOUL WORK
Therefore,
I am encouraging everybody to find a master teacher that you love and respect
and celebrate the ideas they put out to the world. My two teachers are: Robert
Bly, the American poet and Malidoma Some an African elder and drumming teacher.
Both brought soul to their work. Both men are giants of spiritual messages and
are clearly irreplaceable to all.
The poet
Miguel de Unamuno stated: “Our greatest endeavour in this life must be to make
ourselves irreplaceable, so that no one else can fill the gap that will be left
when we die. Each of us is unique and irreplaceable; our soul that is, not
simply our life.” So here they are speaking to us:
Michael
Meade celebrates Robert Bly passing in November of 2021:
“I first
read those lines by Unamuno shortly after meeting Robert Bly and it was
immediately evident to me that he was one of those living so fully, so
uniquely, that he was on the path of being irreplaceable. Robert had a sense of
the immediacy of the soul, that rare sense that the next moment can break open.
And that we must, not simply allow that, but we have to marry it, step into it
and become ourselves in that moment of opening and awakening. If we fail to do
that, then we have not fully participated in the world. Then, the awakening
that is needed, the blossoming that was possible, fails to occur and there is a
loss of soul.
Robert Bly
spoke often of the necessity of grief and wrote that "personal grief can
lead a person to the sorrow of the world. The growth of a person can be
imagined as a power that expands downward into the hurt feelings, then further
downward into compassion and further downward into the vast rooms of melancholy
under the Earth where we are more alive the older, we get, more in tune with
the Earth and the great roots."
Malidoma Patrice
Some also passed away (December 2021) and here is a statement from Michael:
“The name
Malidoma can mean “to make friends with the stranger or enemy.” Following that
sense, Malidoma served as an ambassador from the tribal realms of Africa to the
world of modernity. He had access to traditional practices of wisdom and
healing, and also had a rare intelligence that made him able to shape
meaningful pathways between ancient ways of knowing and the needs and longings
of contemporary cultures.
There were
many elements of his natural genius; of course, his ability to use ancient ways
of connecting to nature and spirit; and the courage to bring healing rituals to
the modern world. His radical intelligence could spark at any moment, quickly
becoming a forceful fountain of ideas that could include insights into the
human psyche as well as visions that could open the realms of nature and
spirit.
You could
say that the fire element of his genius involved his great intelligence as well
as a way of seeing that connected to the ancestral realm. But his genius was
also connected to water as natural element of his soul. At times, he would seem
to become water, as he could be fluid and gentle, like a forest stream. And
from that stream of inner water would come a great generosity and a deep sense
of care.”
“The
spiritual thirst that is latent in everybody can never come to a place of fulfilment
unless people begin to think of each other as potential brothers and sisters”:
Melidoma Some
Finally, I
am attaching my small video recording that will reflect a ritual inspired by
Malidoma.
PEACE ON EARTH
